Useful Information

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History

Description

The island of Kish, 93km² in size and 18km off the Iranian coast is
Iran's first Free Trade-Industrial Zone.
It is one of the nearest visa free zone exits from the United Arab Emirates,
only 240km from Dubai, and thus very popular for day and weekend trips.
Beneath toll free shopping opportunities, there are numerous archaeological sites.
The ancient cities Payab and Harireh, and Kish Underground
City are the most poular archaeological sites on the island.
About 75% of the visitors are from the UAE.

The Kish Underground City seems to have no real name.
It is called Kariz, Underground Town of Cariz, or Qanat of Kish.
But this are not really names, it describes what it is, an Kariz or Quanat.
Both names mean the same, an underground structure which is intended to collect,
purify and store water.
Obviously this is an important, sometimes an essential task, to allow life in
this arid climate.

The kariz was build about 2,500 to 2,000 years ago by the inhabitants of Harireh
city.
The ancient water management system collected water from 274 wells in an area of
14km² and conducts the water to a central filter shaft.
The central shaft is filled with three layers of filter material.
The top layer was coral gravel which was used to neutralize the acids in the
water and filter bigger solids in the water.
Then a layer of coral grit with clay was filtering fine solids, and the lowest
lever was made of marn, a special sort of clay.

Obviously the amount of water which flows through the different layer decreases
from top to bottom.
Because of this some water was collected from different heights.
After the first layer of filtration it was used for irrigating fields, and the
best quality water at the bottom was for drinking.
There were even underground tunnels which allowed sailing boats to enter the
lowest level and collect drinking water from the lowest well.

The vast underground was abandoned long time ago.
Modern technology allows filtering much more water but needs a lot of energy.
The abandoned city was rediscovered in 1999, when a project was started to build
an underground shopping complex.
The complex was developed for numerous shops and restaurants, traditional
teahouses, amphitheaters, conference centers, and art galleries.
At first it had a size of 10,000m², in 2006 it was enlarged to
18,000m², about 16m below the surface.

As a part of the whole structure, the original water filtering unit was
renovated also.
It now works again, filtering continually water, which is used mainly for
irrigation.
The restauration project was financed by Mansour
Haji-Hosseini, an Iranian who lives in Germany.